From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sat Sep 03 2005 - 15:45:45 BST
> [Arlo]
> Show me an "individual". Show me "Arlo" or "Platt", apart from the
> statically-latched, semiotically represented experience that "Arlo" or
> "Platt" serves as an intellectual semiotic reference point.
Oh my lord. Does anybody have any idea what Arlo means? Reminds me of
what Pirsig said about Kluckholn's definition of value orientation --
"With that lead balloon for a vehicle there was no way he could succeed."
(Lila, 5) Likewise, I don't think you can get very far with that
description of Arlo or Platt.
> Your biological body? That's only capable of responding to biological
> quality.
Oh? My biological brain can't respond to social quality language? Please
explain.
> [You wrote]
> Only individuals like you and I can think and reason -- as this and every
> other individual post on this site proves every day. The collective, social
> pattern called the MD doesn't create intellectual patterns, only its
> individual members do, just as the individual named Robert Pirsig created
> the MOQ.
>
> [Arlo]
> Semiotically referenced experiences, with a intellectual referent point
> ("I") allows biological beings with a socially-appropriated language system
> to remediate experience.
Again, please put that in plain English, if you can..
> Just as the social layer is "an organism" that
> uses biological beings for its own purposes, so too does the intellectual
> level use socially-mediated beings for its own purposes. This is straight
> from Pirsig. Your "individual who can reason" is serving this greater
> organism.
Sometimes the Giant uses individuals for its own purposes. At other times
the individual thumbs his nose at the Giant, causing it to crumble and
then evolve to a new, better form. Or does Pirsig's story of the brujo
mean nothing to you?
> [You wrote]
> Individuals are collections of patterns. I agree. That says nothing about
> the source of intellectual patterns, of new ideas.
>
> [Arlo]
> The source of intellectual patterns is the social layer. That's right from
> the MOQ hierarchy, Platt. Inorganic evolves into biological, which evolves
> into social, which evolves into intellectual. Social patterns are the
> foundation out of which intellectual patterns emerge. As stated clearly in
> LILA.
>
> "Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic nature. They originate
> out of society, which originates out of biology which originates out of
> inorganic nature."
Well then you'd better explain why Pirsig wrote, "Whenever you kill a
human being you are killing a source of thought, too."
> [You wrote]
> The patterns of language are social in nature. But the manipulation of
> those patterns that produces new ideas is strictly individual.
>
> [Arlo]
> Not according to Pirsig. Since you seem to avoid Pirsig's words, I'll
> reprint them: "In a value metaphysics, on the other hand, society and
> intellect are patterns of value. They're real. They're independent. They're
> not properties of "man" any more than cats are the property of catfood or a
> tree is a property of soil.
> Let that sink in, Platt. Intellectual patterns are not properties of "man"
> anymore than a tree is the property of soil. They're real. They're
> independent.
Right. Intellectual patterns are properties of individual men and women,
not the abstraction, "man." Let this sink in Arlo: A human being (an
individual) is a source of thought. Intellectual patterns are the property
of individuals like you and me and Pirsig, not non-existent "man."
> Pirsig continues: "In this manner biological man is exploited and devoured
> by social patterns that are essentially hostile to his biological values.
> This is also true of intellect and society. Intellect has its own patterns
> and goals that are as independent of society as society is independent of
> biology.
Yes, and the intellectual patterns of some men, Marx for example, are as
hostile and exploitive of society as society is of biological values.
> The intellectual level manipulates the social level for its own goals, just
> as the social level manipulates biology for its own goals.
Exactly. Free us from the army of intellectual social planners, the do-
gooders, who try to manipulate society for their own selfish ends.
> [Platt quoting Pirsig]
> "Whenever you kill a human being you are killing a source of thought too. A
> human being is a collection of ideas, and these ideas take moral precedence
> over a society. Ideas are patterns of value. They are at a higher level of
> evolution than social patterns of value." (Lila, 13)
>
> [Arlo]
> When have I denied this? The value of the individual lies her/his
> appropriation of semotically represented experience and remediation of
> those experiences back into the intellectual level.
Can you put that in other, simpler words -- please?
> That we serve the
> intellectual level, or rather, that our biological bodies serve the social
> level, it is no surprise to me that our social minds serve the intellectual
> level. Our "value" is in our contribution to the Intellectual level, not
> our supremacy or containment of it.
Ah, so now the individual is finally recognized as such. Just one more
step to go -- the individual is the source of thoughts and ideas of which
the intellectual level is composed.
> More LILA: " The intellectual level of patterns, in the historic process of
> freeing itself from its parent social level, namely the church, has tended
> to invent a myth of independence from the social level for its own benefit.
> Science and reason, this myth goes, come only from the objective world,
> never from the social world. The world of objects imposes itself upon the
> mind with no social mediation whatsoever."
At no time have I denied that culture doesn't influence an individual's
thoughts. But, that doesn't mean that each individual thinks like
everybody else thinks. This site proves it. :-)
> [Platt]
> Right. Not the collective, the individual--celebrated by Pirsig in the very
> title of "Lila" and all the other colorful individual characters in his
> book, from Dusenberry to the "good dog."
>
> [Arlo]
> Mai oui. As Pirsig says, the "Me's" are useful intellectual constructs. The
> important thing is to never forget that's just what they are. Two quotes
> from LILA show this perfectly clearly.
All Pirsig is saying is that every word in every language is an
"intellectual construct." But, he would be the last to say that we can
survive by reading menus.
> LILA: This Cartesian "Me," this autonomous little homunculus who sits
> behind our eyeballs looking out through them in order to pass judgment on
> the affairs of the world, is just completely ridiculous. This
> self-appointed little editor of reality is just an impossible fiction that
> collapses the moment one examines it. This Cartesian "Me" is a software
> reality, not a hardware reality. This body on the left and this body on the
> right are running variations of the same program, the same "Me," which
> doesn't belong to either of them. The "Me's" are simply a program format.
Whether a hardware or software reality is not the issue. Both are real,
and after all the talk about hardware and software realities the fact
remains that you and I and Pirsig are individual realities.
> LILA: This fictitious "man" has many synonyms: "mankind," "people," "the
> public," and even such pronouns as "I," "he," and "they." Our language is
> so organized around them and they are so convenient to use it is impossible
> to get rid of them. There is really no need to. Like "substance" they can
> be used as long as it is remembered that they're terms for collections of
> patterns and not some independent primary reality of their own.
I have no problem saying the individual I refer to as "I" is a collection
of patterns. Actually, I am collection of lots of things, from atoms up to
years. :-)
> You can use your "I" and "me" all you want, but Pirsig is clear about what
> they are.
Yes, and he is clear about who he is, just as you are clear about who you
are. Our individuality comes to the fore in Robert Burns' famous poem:
"O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us."
Or to put it in my own words, "You'll never know what it's like to be
kissed by you."
And, since we both enjoy paradoxes, how about, "We're forever separate, but
never apart."
Platt
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